Smith, Ryan Cecil – Two Eyes of the Beautiful

One more reason to love working on this website: a couple of days ago I reviewed a fairly bad anime-style comic and said that, generally speaking, I wasn’t a big fan of that sort of thing.Â Anime in comics, that is.Â Of course, manga can often be a completely different thing, as this issue is tremendous.Â Well, except for a few printing problems, or actually just the one that makes some of the pages darker than they need to be.Â There’s only one place where the lettering becomes illegible, and then only briefly, so it’s not that big of a deal.Â Just figured I’d start things off with a complaint.Â This is the story of a young movie star who has a horrible flesh-eating disease.Â Her only concern is saving her beauty, and she’s very clear that she’ll do anything to accomplish this.Â An extremely shady doctor tells her to leave public life entirely, move to a remote location with her young daughter and await further instructions.Â The world, naturally, notices her disappearance but eventually concludes that they must be dead.Â Her daughter has been having trouble adjusting (as it’s hard to make friends when your mother is terrified of being recognized) but does make friends with a young girl from the local orphanage.Â Finally, there’s a phone call from the doctor: they need a healthy, beautiful young girl that they can use for any purpose they wish.Â Once again I’m in danger of telling the whole story here, and that ain’t right.Â The rest of the issue deals with a mad struggle and authority figures and their reaction to fame, or I’m reading too much into it.Â One thing: there is a second issue coming, correct?Â Â Because if this is just a one-shot I have a serious problem with the way this thing ended.Â Assuming this is part of a larger series, I can’t recommend it enough.Â It’s creepy in a big way, and there’s still the big overriding mystery of how exactly they plan on making the movie star beautiful again.Â If this is the only issue… well, that’s just mean.Â No price, and the man sent it from Japan, so I have no idea of the exchange rate.Â Isn’t $3 a good guess?Â I think so.Â It’s probably correct, give or take a dollar.